Monthly Archives: July 2011
Green bean salad
We had some fresh green beans on hand and as I was snapping them to size I decided to use them in a cold salad. It was easy enough, just dump the beans into a big pot of salted boiling water to blanch them, these took about five minutes. Plunge the drained beans into an ice water bath to stop them cooking then drain them well and set them aside-covered in the fridge would be perfect.
I collected some grape and cherry tomatoes from the patio to go with the beans. A vinaigrette of your choice is the dressing. I made one with olive oil, white vinegar and honey Dijon mustard. I added chopped green onions, a finely diced red jalapeno, a splash of sesame oil, a smashed and minced clove of garlic, and salt and pepper. Toss the tomatoes and beans with the dressing when serving at the table.
BBQ ribs and roasted potatoes rounded out dinner today.
Mmm…breakfast hash
I love this dish. Dice some potato and sausage-this is Andouille-and fry them in a little oil with diced onion until the potatoes are done and are browning some. Crack some eggs on top and cover, reduce heat to low. When the eggs are set to your liking, plate everything and season with your favorite seasonings. These have some of that Tex-Mex chipotle/ancho pepper mix. Good stuff!
Mmm…pizza! again
I roasted the latest cherry tomatoes on a baking tray, drizzling them with olive oil and seasoning them with salt and fresh pepper first. Gave them 25 or 30 minutes at 350 or so, enough time to wilt them some and turn a few edges brown. They looked perfect for a pizza. One of my frozen pitas and a smear of goat cheese started the pie, and a good slather of awesome sauce atop that, along with some olives, the roasted tomatoes. and some fresh grated Parmesan made it ready for the toaster. The fresh basil and the red pepper flakes go on when served.
That was two vegetarian pizzas in a row. I was ready for some pepperoni on the next one. It also got some fresh mozzarella to go with the last of the goat cheese. Alas, I had used all the roasted tomatoes. We all must share some sacrifice, I suppose.
Close Encounters with Whales
Busy weekend with absolutely no cooking. I’ll get back to it this week, I promise. Meanwhile I wanted to share this story with you. It really touched me.
When I was just out of college I went on a whale watch off of Boston Harbor. It was a great experience and we saw many humpback whales. But I had, what for me, was a profound experience with a female whale. Everyone was on the upper deck, watching a pod. It was crowded and I wandered down to one of the lower decks, port side. I was looking over the rail when suddenly this large, female humpback swam up to the side the boat, rolled and looked directly at me. Her eye was the size of a dinner plate. And it was very clear she was looking at me while I looked at her. She stayed beside the boat with me for quite sometime before rejoining the pod. I was the the only one on that deck and I felt honored to have such an experience.
Anyone else have a gentle encounter with a wildlife that touched you?
Mmm…pizza with dried tomatoes
I’ve had a jar of dried Roma tomatoes soaking in herbed olive oil with garlic for nearly a year. Time to deploy them, and a pizza is the perfect vehicle.
I went minimalist on the toppings, with the dried tomatoes are some green olives, a good sprinkling of the oil the tomatoes came in, some fresh mozzarella and aged Parmesan. A bit of red pepper flakes and a few fresh basil leaves added at the table and this thing was ready. Mmm…
Minicorn
One bright spot in an otherwise dismal garden has been the sweet corn. And by bright spot I mean sorta cute.
The corn plants never got much taller than chest high but they were developing ears, and they tasseled out and looked just like they should aside from the whole size issue. I looked them over yesterday, felt the ears through the husks, and noted the dried, brown silks. Mrs J pulled one and stripped the husk-it was ready as it would ever be. We took in the entire crop. You see it there in the picture above.
It ate like real corn! Yay!
The patio garden is going great guns, the cherry tomatoes are really coming on, and the jalapenos are producing-I canned 3 more pints from the two bushes we are tending. There is a sprawling grape tomato bush that has been making green tomatoes for a while, some of those are turning red. We may well be covered up with little tomatoes. I’ve been looking at recipes. Stay tuned!
How to Find a Recipe
Believe it or not, I use this blog as my own personal recipe book. I have most of the recipes I’ve posted on my computer in my cookbook…which eventually I will someday finish editing and make it available to you guys. But there are many recipes that I created just for the blog, recipes from other guest bloggers (and of course JeffW) that I don’t keep on file anywhere else.
And, don’t tell the guys, but sometimes I need to look for a recipe at work so I can stop at the market on the way home, so it’s nice to be able to pull up the blog and get it from here. What I love about the blog is I can search by recipe name or ingredient and find what I need no matter when the original was posted. Then I print it out and take it with me.
I started thinking the other day that you may not know how to search for recipes on the blog, so I decided a quick tutorial might be needed. It is very simple:
Go to the Search W4DS box (which right now is at the top, right hand side of the page, it may not always be there)
Type in an ingredient and hit enter.
If that is too many choices, choose a couple of ingredients, like carrots, cake, pineapple.
This will bring you fewer recipes, or in this case, I was looking for the recipe for my carrot cake.
If you have a specific recipe in mind, say you want the ever popular steak coffee rub recipe, just put quotation marks around your search items: “coffee rub” and that will bring up all the references to the recipe.
I know this is all pretty simple stuff, but I wanted to make sure you could find any recipe anytime on our little blog. Once you find a recipe, let us know how it turned out for you, I’m always excited to know. Bon appétit!
This information will be permanently posted under finding a recipe at the top of the blog.
Mmm…tostadas
Not to mention the fresh patio jalapenos and cherry tomatoes in the scrambled eggs. This was just marvelous for breakfast today. I’ve mentioned the tostadas before, they weren’t crisped up in hot oil in a pan, I brushed on oil and sprinkled the pepper mix on them and then popped them into my toaster oven and gave them enough time to brown a bit, but they still retain some pliability. Zip zop with a pizza cutter and you have instant wedges.
Mmm…jambalaya
I had a handful of brown rice in the cupboard I wanted to use up so I used it in this classic Cajun dish. The dish was designed to use up odds and ends of fixings, and nothing can be really considered out of bounds, be it muskrat, raccoon, shellfish or etc & etc. Nothing outre in this one, never fear!
Emeril has a popular recipe that I used as a guide today. Brown rice can be a pain to cook, so I did it apart from the rest of the dish, using my rice cooker on the brown rice setting. I dumped the cooked rice into the pot atop the veggies and let it come back to heat before adding the chicken. Tossed in some tasso just because I had some, along with the Andouille.
My shrimp was already cooked, so I added it the very last thing before serving, giving it enough time to warm through. Since our patio cherry tomato bushes are producing well I halved a bunch of those instead of chopping a regular tomato. They were very good in this.
TaMara
jeffreyww
LFern7
indylib
